In a stack switch system, i.e., a switch fabric, fabric ports of switches are communicatively coupled to each other and send fabric packets via respective ports. A chip typically generates a fabric packet by adding a fabric header to an Ethernet packet to be forwarded in the switch fabric. However, if a port on a switch in the switch fabric is configured to operate as an Ethernet port and receives the fabric packet, the switch containing the Ethernet port often discards the fabric packet due to the existence of a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) error.